Bravo! It’s all coming together now, lads. And don’t worry, the bonfire didn’t get banned.

‘No way.’

The cultural festival is in full swing and things are kicking off right from the get-go. Rika witnesses her boyfriend being very friendly with another girl and has to lie down for a while (mood), a certain persistent young man shows up at the festival to torment poor Momoko, Nina manages to make a mess of things for herself and Hongo is doted on by her teachers for her writing skills. However, none of the characters react to their predicaments in the cliche way I would expect them to. It’s super refreshing. The most cliche of them all, our main girl Kazusa, is just so unbearably sweet you can’t help but smile and cheer her on. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – you’re cute, Kazusa!!! Ganbare!!!

I forgot to talk about in my last review, but last episode we saw Momoko go through a whole lot of emotional labor on behalf of Satoshi, the boy who keeps pursuing her. He wants to talk to her, but without thinking about her situation or what she might be doing he repeatedly calls her, and this week he turns up to see her at the cultural festival. Momoko thinks hard about how to respond to his messages and phone calls and about how her reactions might be read or construed by him, but he never considers her thoughts or feelings even once. So, it was really refreshing to see her finally express her how she felt about him this episode and tell him that she really doesn’t consider him a friend at all! You got this, Momoko!

Rika’s spiral downward is understandable, a little dramatic, but not absurd. There’s a concept around dating I see a lot in media where if someone in a relationship seems friendly with someone of a different gender, it means they’re interested in that person or even cheating. It’s a little ridiculous. It depends on where you’re from, but I get the impression in Japan that many friendships or friend groups are more often than not segregated by gender. It doesn’t seem to be as common here to have friends in that way (whereas I grew up having an almost all-male friend group), so I wonder if that’s why this trope, in particular, is so common in anime and manga.

However, Rika doesn’t actually voice any such assumption, she simply emotionally reacts. By lying face down across the seats in the break room. Following this, there is a really, really nice scene with her and one of the gyaru-like girls from her class (Sonoe). We finally get to see her point of view in some kind of depth on female sexuality and what it means to her to be in a relationship, and it’s depicted for what it is – totally valid, just different to Rika’s. Different girls have different approaches to relationships – some girls want to go by feeling, fall in love, have their heart race and all that before any kind of, ahem, activity. But some girls are quite happy to have some fun and see what all that stuff is like before they decide if they love that person. It was really great that Rika could sincerely listen to what Sonoe had to say and finally understand her point of view.

Kazusa’s worst fears have been confirmed this episode, but she doesn’t know it yet. She sits together with Momoko and Nina in-between performances and talks to them about her firm decision to tell Izumi how she feels, and that maybe if he can witness their performance of the love legend their club thought up that he’ll understand what’s coming. This whole scene is shot from Nina’s point of view; she’s paying close attention to what Kazusa’s saying and how she’s feeling, but we still don’t know what she plans to do or what she’s really thinking. Which makes the performance that Izumi comes to see all the more exciting.

‘I’d confess to…’

Meanwhile, nothing seems to be going Hongo’s way but that’s exactly the way things have gotta go. Sometimes that’s how it be.

This episode juggled all the intertwining, simultaneous plotlines happening very well, dropping us off into the next one at just the right moments to keep us strung along for every character. A few scenes were perhaps too short but I felt none were too long or wasted.

Speaking of wasted – not a second was! How many confessions did we get this episode!? Sincerely glad not to have the series end on a major confession, because I always want to see what comes next once a pair discover they like each other. Let’s see where they take it in episode nine!

What did you think of this episode? I’m trying not to say too much in these reviews but it’s hard, okay!! Let us know what you liked or didn’t like the series so far and see you next time!

NEXT TIME: The Orange Fox’s Lilies (キツネノカミソリ)